“And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.” But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!””
You see, the fact that at this point Jacob believes this is an angel that he’s clinging to, suggests to us one reason he made the request he did. If this angel works for God, then maybe the angel could be the conduit by which he can receive the blessing from God he still craves. This leads us to the second reason he made this request. Rising to the front of Jacob’s mind was his first attempt to get this blessing from his father Isaac illegitimately through deception, and it’s this type of self-reliant manipulating, cunning and maneuvering that had characterized much of his story up until this point. However, now Jacob is clinging to this Man he thinks is an angel with a persevering faith in order to obtain this blessing legitimately. And this is exactly where God was trying to bring Jacob and it’s what He’d been trying to bring out of him during this encounter. You see, God knows the back story to Jacob’s lying. He knew that Jacob had inherited what had become a generational cycle of lying and was leading him to retrace his story in order to break the cycle. This is because God intervenes in the midst of your personal crisis to break generational cycles that have shaped your identity by leading you to…
RETRACE YOUR STORY IN PERSEVERING FAITH.
When I first found out I was going to be a father I was very excited as well as a little nervous. I felt the weight of this new reality because my father wasn’t a regular part of my life growing up due to my parents divorce. Then just this past Sunday I discovered more of the back story from my father who told me not only did he not grow up with his father due to his parents divorce, but he didn’t even know his grandfather. He doesn’t even know his name! He can only remember seeing him once as a child in the 1940s. So clearly there has been a generational cycle of fatherlessness and divorce in the backstory of my family. So, going back to when I found out I was going to be a father, I was inspired by the story of Enoch walking with God in Genesis and the commentary of his story in the book Patriarchs and Prophets, to take my relationship with Jesus to a deeper level by taking a 30 minute walk in nature each day to meditate on what I read in Scripture. I didn’t want the generational cycle of fatherlessness to continue and therefore, I made a conscious decision to be a present father. However, I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. So by going on that meditative walk I was persevering by faith in Jesus, so that He could break the cycle!
In Exodus 34:7, God told Moses that the iniquity of the fathers passes on to their children and their children’s children to the 3rd and 4th generation. This is describing an inherited generational cycle that by nature, and by nurture in the environment of the family of origin, a child has a weakened disposition towards choosing to participate in. And this was very evident in Jacob’s backstory. His grandfather Abraham lied twice about his wife Sarah being his sister. Then his father Isaac also lied about his wife Rebecca being his sister in the same type of situation his father Abraham had been in when he lied. It’s this generational cycle of lying and deceit, coming out of relying on self, that has shaped much of Jacob’s identity. He is now the 3rd generation to face this cycle of deception. And in order to break this cycle, God had to lead Jacob to retrace his story and move him from self-reliance to persevering faith.
You may be in a personal crisis right now, that God is intervening into, not in order to hurt you, but to help you break generational cycles by first leading you to retrace your story, only now with persevering faith. However, it is vitally important for you to know your story, especially your back story that goes back generations. This means a safe, grace-filled environment needs to be set at home so the stories of the family line can be shared. These stories must not be shared from a place of guilt, shame or judgment, but from a place of compassion, discovery and learning from the past. Parents, if you do not set the safe environment to tell your children your true story, including the families back story, then they will be handicapped and prone to repeat the mistakes of the past. Make it safe for them to ask about your story. Only now, you’re telling and retracing the story by faith in Jesus and how He transformed your story.
Now in order to break the generational cycles in Jacob and our lives, God has something else He needs to bring to our awareness in verse 27…
Stay tuned for Part Three…
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CJ COUSINS, Speaker/Author
Follower of Jesus, Husband, Father, Associate Pastor for Younger Generations at Vienna SDA Church and Speaker/Author for Living For Him. CJ’s passion is to live, preach & teach the Good News about Jesus and multiply disciples for His Kingdom.